Labeling in ArcGIS Pro

A great deal of labeling in ArcGIS Pro can be handled dynamically, by customizing settings in the Maplex Label Engine. We'll look at the options, then add a few custom touches at the end. Before you begin labeling, you may want to outline a rough style sheet for your features. In this walk-through, we'll be using Open Sans and Baskerville, which can be downloaded from Font Squirrel (www.fontsquirrel.com). You may also substitute fonts of your choice. The following are the steps involved:

1. Open the sample typography project, MNTypography.aprx. Take a moment to explore the project, which has point, line, and area features pared down for the purposes of our practice.
2. Notice that St. Paul (the capital) is in a separate layer from the rest of the cities. This allows more flexibility of symbolization, which we'll discuss later, in Chapter 8, Clean Symbology and Uncluttered Maps.

1. Before we go any further, let's verify that the Maplex Label Engine is turned on. Maplex offers greater customization than the standard label engine, which means less manual cleanup work after adding labels. In ArcGIS Pro, this should be turned on by default, but you can verify this on the Map tab. In the Labeling section, click More, and make sure Use Maplex Label Engine is checked.
2. Features to be labeled in this map are as follows—cities, highways, rivers, lakes, and counties. A sample style sheet is outlined in the following table. You don't need to decide all at once, but it's helpful to have a rough plan and update as you go. The following table helps in labeling the style sheet: